Volume 10 Issue 4, April 2015

Tackling the degradation of cultural heritage requires a global effort. We call on all material scientists to develop new nanomaterials and methods for the preservation of artwork.

More than a decade after it was first published, Chris Toumey revisits a report from the Royal Society on the opportunities and uncertainties of nanotechnology, and finds that it still has plenty to offer.

The four-letter molecular code of DNA and the twenty-letter expression language of peptides have inspired the development of two thriving, but distinct, branches of nanotechnology; a technique that combines the two approaches could lead to robust, scalable materials with unique optoelectronic properties.

By combining the geometric phase with plasmonic metasurfaces, it is possible to make wide-angle holograms with power efficiency of 80% over a broad range of frequencies.

Calcium and phosphate ions secreted in the intestine form nanoparticles that protect and shuttle protein antigens from the lumen to immune cells in the intestinal wall lining.

The combination of Cerenkov light and nanoparticles now enables photodynamic therapy that does not rely on external light sources.

Multimodal microbubbles exposed to ultrasound shrink to nanoparticles that retain the imaging and drug delivery potential of the parent microbubble.

A thermal diode with two orders of magnitude higher on/off ratio than that previously achieved can be obtained by combining normal metals and superconductors.

Using a metasurface comprising an array of nanorods with different orientations and a backreflector, a hologram image can be obtained in the visible and near-infrared with limited loss of light intensity.

The 1T metallic phase of MoS₂ shows high volumetric capacitance and electrochemical properties that are attractive for supercapacitor applications.

A technique based on templated electrochemical synthesis can be used to prepare coaxial nanowires with sub-10 nm resolution in both axial and radial dimensions.

On exposure to low-frequency ultrasound, porphyrin microbubbles form nanoparticles that possess the same optical and therapeutic properties as the original microbubble, which can be used simultaneously for imaging and drug delivery.

The controlled oxidation of magnetic layers in a multilayer structure enables the spin–orbit torques to be engineered.

Linearly superposing multiple modes of a nanomechanical resonator enables molecular-scale imaging of the spatial mass distribution of individual analytes.

The underlying physics of the Plateau–Rayleigh instability can be exploited during core–shell nanowire synthesis to grow diameter-modulated homostructures and heterostructures with tunable morphologies.

Peptide nucleic acids can self-assemble into ordered architectures that are coordinated by both stacking interactions and Watson–Crick base pairing, and exhibit a variety of optical properties.

Calcium phosphate nanoparticles formed naturally in the intestine aid the transport of soluble molecules from the gut lumen to immune cells of the intestinal tissue, and contribute to the immune surveillance and homeostasis of the gut.

Cerenkov radiation from radionuclides is used to activate titanium dioxide nanophotosensitizers to achieve depth-independent phototherapy.

Working in large collaborations can help you understand how nanotechnology is closely related to other fields, explains Elizabeth Huynh.